


Road Burn

by twnkwlf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Bisexuality, Drug Dealer Stiles Stilinski, Drug Dealing, M/M, Marijuana, New York City, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Skateboarding, Skater Stiles Stilinski, Stoner Stiles Stilinski, the one where stiles sells weed and derek is his supplier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 20:32:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7906591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twnkwlf/pseuds/twnkwlf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles thought maybe they should small talk more often, or be friendly, or something. This wasn’t Pineapple Express and he wasn’t looking to be the Seth Rogen to Derek’s James Franco, but something had to give because Stiles couldn’t even keep still or silent with people he actually felt comfortable around— let alone a guy who was wearing latex gloves and probably owned a gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rip roscoe

**Author's Note:**

> what tf is with my obsession with stoner stiles lmao
> 
> i started writing this like two years ago and i need it to be out of my drafts so i've decided to post it and keep working on it
> 
> TW: please be warned there are instances of non-consensual drug use and sex in this story. also drugs and drug use is explained in a lot of detail (including shooting up).

When the bong hit the pavement, it shattered into a thousand little glass diamonds and made a magnificent sound that rang through the whole neighbourhood. A few people were standing on their stoops watching the drama unfold out on the street like it was just another episode of the Stilinski family soap opera. Stiles's heart broke a little.

"That's the last time, you hear me?"

His dad’s voice was tight and severe, and he was still in his uniform _for the love of god_. The NYPD letters on his jacket seemed to pop whiter as he infiltrated Stiles's personal space. That vein in his neck pulsed bright blue.

“I hear you,” Stiles pushed out through gritted teeth.  

"What's that?" Oh _come on._

 _"_ I hear you, _officer."_

“Don’t you forget that Stiles,” Officer Stilinski said, lower this time, leaning closer so Stiles could smell the faint vapour of Jack Daniels left over from his pre-dinner, post-work ounce. “How do you think it would look on me, huh? How do you think it would make the precinct look if you were caught hauling that thing around? I can’t have this crap in my house, kid.”

Stiles personally didn’t give a shit what the 81st precinct thought about his father. He also thought that maybe, if his dad was so concerned with his image, he shouldn’t run around smashing glass bongs on the street where all of Brooklyn could see.

"If I find something like this again,” he paused to point at the shattered remains of the bong, which Stiles had already been staring at with regret and abject horror for the duration of his dad’s lecture. “I'll drag you straight to the station myself. That’s a promise.”

“A pinky promise?” He stuck out his left hand and wiggled his pinky in his dad’s face, cracking a smile. He’d meant to try and break the tension, but it came off more cavalier than cute. His dad looked away, frowning deeply, then walked back toward the house grumbling in that thick Long Island accent he still had.

Stiles took a look around the street, where the sun was easing the hot summer day into another hot summer evening. The sounds of screen doors opening and closing filled the air, banter and television noise drifted through open windows. Kids yelled and carried on a few streets over. His neighbor, Mr. Harris, was still on the stoop smoking a cigarette and giving Stiles a smug look. Stiles quickly flipped him off as he made his way back to the house. He had to sidestep to the curb so he didn't cut his bare feet on broken glass.

Once upon a time, he might have tried to save his bong from the throes of his dad’s fury. He might have grabbed the bong and taken off in the other direction because a) it had sentimental value, and b) it had cost, like, a hundred and fifty bucks. Stiles just let the punishment play out the way it was meant to because truthfully, he was still reeling from the relief of coming home to find that it was just his bong sitting on the coffee table in front of his dad and not the _four ounces of weed_ he had stashed in his floorboards upstairs.

He’d been at the park when his dad called and ominously told him, "you get your ass home in the next ten minutes or I'm sending the cruiser.”

And then he'd hung up, leaving Stiles on the fringe of the skate ramp, a panic attack on the horizon. He'd been so paralyzed that his board fell forward and hit Malia, knocking her off her own. He hadn’t even heard her yell for him to “watch himself or she’d shove his board so far up his ass” _\--_

He’d just pulled his hat over his eyes and imagined his father flushing all that weed down the toilet. He was fucked.

But when he got home from the longest skate of his life, having puked in someone's garden twice along the way, he found only his father sitting with the newly cleaned Hoss glass which he'd named Roscoe, by the way. Well, fuck Roscoe. If he’d found the stash, he’d probably have cuffs on his wrists by now.

As his dad retreated to the kitchen, slamming the front door behind him, Stiles quietly snuck up the stairs. Up in his room, he crawled under his bed and pried open the last floorboard near the wall, which he'd covered with a box of old Pokemon cards. The stuff was still there, still wrapped in three ziplock bags and locked in a case to keep the smell contained, and so was his scale, his clippers, his baggies, an old pipe caked in resin, some Afghan hash that he was saving for Lydia’s party, and the miniature vaporizer he hadn’t used in a while. He kissed the weed hello before zipping it into his backpack, along with his 3DS, a few lighters, and all the cash he'd made that month.

He jumped into his shoes, grabbed his board, pulled his hat back until it flopped the right way, and crawled back down the stairs. They creaked so loudly that he was sure his dad rigged them to stop him from sneaking out. So of course, the Officer called out, "Where do you think you're headed?" before he could slip out the door unnoticed.

He came into the glaring light of the kitchen, where his dad sat the table, jacket hung up with the gun holster, and three fingers of whiskey in his favorite tumbler. The bottle was three quarters empty now. It had been full yesterday.

“I’m going to Scott’s,” he told him, like it was obvious.

The air in this house was tense, taut like a guitar string about to snap. It had been this way between Stiles and his dad for a while now, for so long that Stiles didn’t know when it began or how it would end.

His dad chuckled and shook his head. He tipped his glass back until it was finished, clearly gearing up to ground him. Stiles could feel it boiling over. “You’re not running off tonight, kiddo.”

Sure, Stiles got high a lot, but what about his dad? What about the bottle of whiskey on the table? What about all the empty bottles of whiskey sitting in the garage? Anger dropped quickly into his stomach and burned white hot for an impulsive, reckless moment. In one motion, he grabbed the bottle from under his dad’s nose and sprinted the few feet to the front door. Behind him, he heard his dad swear and violently push away from the table, knocking over the chair in the process.

“Stiles!”

He didn’t even climb down the stairs, just jumped down from the top of the stoop, and in one fluid motion, while his dad was just at his heels, he pitched the bottle of whiskey right at the place where the remnants of his bong lied. It broke just as easily.

It was fucking poetic justice.

With his heart wildly pounding, it only took him another half a second to throw down his board and take off in the other direction, skating as fast as one spindly leg could push him. His dad called out his name once, twice, three times, but Stiles didn’t care, and he didn’t look back. He had good product in his backpack. He had his board. He had his goddamn gameboy. He would go make that drop at Boyd’s house, earn a little cash, top off his supply with Derek, and everything would be good. Everything _was good._

Everything was great.

*

“You need to be more careful, dude.” Scott pulled on the brim of his snapback, twisting it so he wore it backwards like always. “Seriously, he’s gonna arrest you. I mean, what kind of drug dealer has a cop for a dad?”

“Children of law enforcement agents are actually more likely to commit offenses.” It was a bullshit statistic, but Stiles could see how it might be true.

As they walked through the sketchy hallways of Boyd’s apartment building, the lights above them flickered fluorescent green and white. Behind the paint-chipped apartment doors they walked past, there were surely others with a few illegal substances in their backpacks.

 “You’re gonna get sent to juvie. Or, like tried as an adult? And then you’d go to _jail_ , like, _actual_ jail. With gangsters. And murderers.” Scott’s eyes went fuzzy for a moment. “If your dad arrests you who’s going to do the Wolf Pack video with me?”

Stiles slapped Scott upside the head. His hat fell off. “Would you relax? I’m not getting arrested. And I told you I’m not joining the—“ he made air quotation marks “-- _Wolf Pack_.”

Scott’s grand idea for the summer was to get a competitive skate team together. They were going to shoot some promotional videos using the camera that Erica stole from Best Buy last year, and try to actually compete in some end-of-the-summer showdown that was being broadcasted on ESPN 2. But of course Scott had decided to call them _The Wolf Pack,_ which sounded like they were paying homage to The Hangover movies, and it was ridiculous, and there was no way Stiles was going to have his name on it.

“Come on, you skate with us every day anyway. You’re part of the pack! Make it official!” Then Scott rolled up his hoodie to show Stiles the snarling wolf tattoo on his forearm-- the second most stupid tattoo of all time next to those arm bands he got last year. Scott threw his head back and howled, but Stiles cut the piercing noise off by slapping a hand over Scott’s mouth.

 “It’s official,” he muffled behind Stiles’ hand.

Boyd had been working at Burger King for the summer and now he was blowing all his hard earned cash on Stiles’ stash. A little bit richer, stiles packed a tight bowl and twisted in some tobacco out of one of Boyd’s mom’s cigarettes to make it count, and he got heavy-high with Scott and Boyd while an episode of Adventure Time that he’d already seen played on the TV.

“You coming to Isaac’s show tonight?” he asked Boyd, tossing a nerf football in the air.

“Yeah, just to watch him choke.” Boyd chuckled low in his belly. 

Scott looked up from his phone, a frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Hey! He’s working on the stage fright. He played a coffee house last week and didn’t even throw up after,” he said, reaching for the open bag of sour patch kids on Boyd’s table.

*

Isaac’s played guitar in a band called _Deep Freezer_ that really sucked unless you liked music that sounded like it was being played in the back of a van. They stood together on the tiny, crowded stage,  half-rapping, half-singing to a three-chord riff on a guitar hooked up to a fuzzy sounding amp. Technically, it was an all-ages show, but this club never checked anyone’s bags at the door so everyone was already sipping from water bottles and flasks, drunk enough that Isaac’s band sounded half-enjoyable.

Stiles used to get so nervous walking past these places. They were angry and loud, even from the outside, spewing kids and drunks out onto the street. Loud noises and tightly packed places had scared the shit out of him when he was young. He was a panicky kid after his mom died, and at 12 years old, weed had been as taboo as heroin because his father was a cop and Stiles had won the D.A.R.E anti-drug speech competition in grade six by talking about drug crime and overdose rates.

That all changed, of course, when he turned 13. He got his first skateboard from Melissa as birthday present and he and Scott spent hours rolling around the little skate park a few neighborhoods over. He and Scott were just little square sponges that soaked up the world of blood and wipeouts, the smell of spray paint, the cigarettes stolen from mothers’ purses and the inconspicuous pipes filled with sticky green buds, the loud echoes of curse words and insults, and of course, the omnipresent and _luscious_ sound of skateboard wheels rolling down ramps.

He absently nodded along to the song, passing through the crowd to find familiar faces. He kept a handful of dime bags in his pocket, and would see someone who usually bought from him, feign a hug and do a little trade off in their pockets.

He saw Lydia drinking out of a water bottle near the bar, eyes intent on Isaac’s band.

“Hey, hot stuff,” she said when he approached. She leaned over and put her head over on his shoulder. She was with a guy that Stiles had never seen before and who looked suddenly dejected when Lydia started talking to Stiles. Lydia’s boyfriends were disposable, but her friends were iron clad, and somehow Stiles had made it into that elite circle. When they first met, she’d seemed aloof and a little high and mighty for his liking, but eventually he understood that Lydia had a quiet mode of friendship. She was the kind of person who wouldn’t talk to you all night, but then sat in your lap as when there were no seats left. She would eviscerate your ex in any way you asked. She would shoplift anything you expressed interest in.

She slipped under his arm as he slipped her weed into the pocket of the high waisted shorts she wore. She hummed and kissed his cheek, taking her phone out to text someone and handing him some cash on the sly.

“What are you drinking?” he asked her. She wordlessly handed him her water bottle. It was straight absinthe. Typical Lydia.

He threw back a rather large mouthful and shivered at the burning of it.

“Well, someone’s had a bad day,” she said with raised brows.

“Roscoe the bong has been put to rest.” He rolled his eyes. “And my dad probably has his every cop in a ten mile radius on the lookout for me.”

“Oh honey,” she said with absolutely zero sweetness. “They have bigger fish to fry in this neighborhood. And you know we like Malia’s bong better anyway.”

For the rest of Isaac’s set, they took small sips of absinthe and judged the hell out of every guy on Lydia’s Tinder. The date she’d arrived with left at some point.

When the show was over, Stiles wanted to beat the rush out the door. He kissed Lydia goodbye and moved away from the bar, into the sweaty throng. Scott was lost somewhere in the crowd, probably drunk, probably making out with Allison, and Stiles was out of weed now. For a moment, he didn’t really know where to go, but he couldn’t really go home, could he? Not with the way he left things with his dad.

While boarding his way toward the subway, he sent a text to Derek.

**_u good for another few ounces?_ **

The reply was almost immediate.

**_Give me an hour. I’ll buzz you in._ **

Derek was the kind of guy who used proper grammar and punctuation in texts. He liked that about him. He was the real-deal, not some shady supplier that worked out of a trap house in Bushwick and would jerk you around until you ended up losing money in the process.

He spent the whole subway ride listening to his iPod so loudly that his ears ached. It was Friday night and the streets were alive like a vein, loud, angry, laughing and screaming.

This loft Derek lived in was in Prospect Heights surrounded by, like, eight hipster cafes and a library. He pressed the buzzer next to the little slot that read _Hale,_ and remembered the first time he ever came here, about four months ago, nervous as hell, not knowing if he was walking into a trap.

*

Danny used to be the kid around the park who had weed, and because Scott was always too nervous to score, Stiles got to know Danny pretty well. It probably all started when he was 15, and he asked Danny if he could spot Stiles a half-quarter to bring to Long Island for his family’s thanksgiving dinner. All his cousins would be there, and since he’d started smoking, he couldn’t actually imagine having to sit through a Stilinski family function without being at least a little stoned.

And then, at the family function, he made his cousins pay double what Stiles was paying for the weed because they were squares and knew nothing about street prices. He gave Danny most of the extra cash for interest and Danny was impressed, asked him to do it again.

He went to some of his cousin’s parties with a little bit of weed every now and then, met up with Danny, became a sort of casual middle-man _._ Sometimes he would sling dime bags at the park when Danny had school. He didn’t even realize that it was technically _dealing_ until Scott got all freaked out about it, seeing the cash he’d collected over the whole year, which was a lot. Stiles knew the NYPD pretty well thanks to his dad, so he knew how to hide his shit, just like he’d been hiding his personal stash for years, and he knew how to make it look like he still needed his weekly allowance. It never freaked him out-- it was easy. It was just weed.

And a few months ago, Danny was getting ready to move to Washington because he’s kind of a genius and was accepted into some physics program that the weed business was helping pay for. He said to Stiles one night at the park, scooting around on his board,

“I can probably hook you up with my dealer, man. You could take over. It’s good money.”

So he let Danny drag him to the loft to meet Derek-- not because of the money, really-- but because he imagined himself being the guy that everyone knew and everyone liked. Kids who usually ignored him were always coming up to him, asking him things, hanging out and smoking bowls with him. His backpack suddenly made him kind of popular. Scott had always had more friends than him. He fit in, he was a better skater, and Stiles was good at being the kid with the drugs.

He imagined Danny’s dealer as some kind of sketchy, haggard looking guy with a tiny apartment that stank like skunk weed.  He didn’t expect Derek. Derek was _intimidatingly_ good looking. He was clean, and everything he owned was expensive, but quaint in a way. Stiles had given Danny a look that meant _that is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen_. And Danny had given him a look that meant _I know._

Danny told him, “This kid is a protégé, man. He knows how to drive the price up.”

Derek had reached into a bag and set out the most weed Stiles had ever seen in one place, and then he had told him the basics in a smooth, calm voice, and Stiles realized this guy knew what he was doing. The last thing he’d said was,

 “I don’t know you, so I can’t trust you, but you should know that even though this is a small business, it’s a serious one. If you get made, if you slip up, if you rat—nothing good is going to come of it—whatever shitty plea bargain your PD sets you up with. We’re careful. So I don’t really care if they search my place, but the people I work for care a lot. So keep your mouth shut.”

Afterward, Danny told Stiles that he gave him the exact same spiel, that he shouldn't be worried, that Derek was cool. Cool might not have been the operative word for Derek. It was more like cold.

He seemed like kind of a loner, really quiet whenever Stiles dropped by, always reading a book or something. Small talk fell short so they always just made the deal neatly and quietly. There was something oddly comforting about Derek’s stoniness. He was calm, collected, but at the same time sort of like a librarian who might snap at you if you made noise. Stiles had to wonder what happened in this guy's life to have him on the opposite side of The War on Drugs.

*

Stiles was finally buzzed in and he dragged himself up the flights of stairs, skateboard tucked behind the straps of his backpack, wishing that he was wearing something  little less sketchy, and hoping that the sweaty bodies at Isaac’s show hadn’t made him too ripe. Derek always wore brand name t-shirts and fitted jeans. Even his glasses looked like they cost more than his dad’s mortgage. Stiles’ shirt could hardly even be called a tank top anymore because the arm holes hung so low, you could see his ribs. His jeans had a lot of tears in them, not even in a cool way, just in the I-haven’t-bought-new-jeans-in-a-year way. He pulled back his hat self-consciously, wondering if you were supposed to wash beanies after a while.

Why did he even care what he looked like? Derek wouldn’t give a shit. He shook his face back and forth, feeling weird and nervous like he always felt when he banged on Derek’s door. It opened before he knocked.

“Hey,” he said, stepping aside. Derek wasn’t wearing his glasses. He wasn’t wearing a shirt-- just sweat pants that hung kind of low.

And... _abs_.

Derek was all sweaty and out of breath. Stiles took a second longer to step through the threshold because the image that instantly popped in his mind was very erotic and not at all the kind of thing he should be thinking about his dealer. Then he noticed the lights on the treadmill in the corner, lit up, paused from a work out, and it made more sense that he’d been running, not in the other room fucking a Norwegian supermodel or something.

He was kind of aware, suddenly, while watching Derek move into his back room, that his groin was feeling achy. People just did this to him. Girls who had pouty lips and soft chests, boys who were built up like statues. He just tried to breathe and act normal, keep it normal by digging into his backpack for the wad of cash.

When Derek walked back into the room, he was holding a case and wearing a shirt. He pointed to the leather couches that surrounded the glass coffee table and Stiles took a seat as Derek did, snapping the case open. He watched Derek slip on a pair of gloves.

In an effort to distract himself, he was compelled to blurt out small talk. He pointed to the state-of-the-art treadmill. “So...you run a lot?”

“I’m a personal trainer,” he said without looking up.

“What-- is that like, your day job?”

Derek didn’t comment, but shrugged a bit. There was something to be said in the way that he was still an enigma. Stiles thought maybe they should small talk more often, or be friendly, or _something._ This wasn’t Pineapple Express and he wasn’t looking to be the Seth Rogen to Derek’s James Franco, but something had to give because Stiles couldn’t even keep still or silent with people he actually felt comfortable around— let alone a guy who was wearing latex gloves and probably owned a gun.

Stiles fidgeted forward and stuck out his elbow, showing Derek the ugly red scrape from last week's wipeout that had scabbed over. “Yikes, right?”  

Derek paused his hands, looking up. "That's a hell of a road rash."

Stiles admired it for a second, shrugging. "It'll heal."

"You should be more careful."

"Falling down's just a part of it. You never skateboarded when you were a kid?"

Derek turned back to the scales, his fingers deftly pinching stems and lining up buds. "I rode dirt bikes," he said. "Fell midair once. Broke my collarbone and tore my ACL."

This was the most conversation Stiles had ever gotten out of Derek that wasn't explicitly about strain and THC potency. Banking on it, he reached into his back pocket where he kept a cigarette case that held no cigarettes and only the roaches from past joints, and one rolled cigar of Derek’s primo Indica. He held it up and asked, “Can I smoke in here?”

Derek shrugged one shoulder. After lighting it, he held it out to Derek.

“No,” he said, not even looking up

“You don’t smoke weed?” he asked, failing to hide any of his skepticism.

“Never.”

Amused, Stiles sat back in the sofa and stared at the cigar. The smoke curled up, white, thick, and pretty. “Because of your day job?”

“That’s a part of it.”

He was being purposefully coy, but Stiles had the impression that it went deeper than abstinence for the sake of his lung capacity. Then Derek said, “It helps plenty of people, but I’m not one of them.”

 “Well…it certainly pays your bills.”

“There’s a big difference between the business and the product.” Derek looked up again, meeting Stiles’ eyes this time and somehow making him question himself.  “You should try to remember that. Focus on what’s important.” He placed his hand pointedly over the cash on the table.

Stiles couldn’t believe he was being given sobriety advice from a guy who was about to hand him eight ounces of marijuana. He licked his fingers and pinched out the cherry at the end of the joint.

“I’ll have to cut back, anyway,” he said. “Someone smashed my bong.”

Derek raised one of his thick eyebrows again. He was the kind of guy who communicated in looks, and Stiles never knew how to interact with him because his own face just didn’t measure up, never conveyed much beyond a squinty “I’m stoned” expression.

“Your _dad_ smashed your bong, you mean?” Derek asked, which made Stiles’ stomach lurch a little.

“Um…”

“I know he’s a cop. You can relax.”

“How do you…?”

“I’ve done a few background checks.” Derek shrugged again, one shoulder, his signature body language. “Danny too.”

Stiles itched his neck uncomfortably while he felt the sudden, prickling impact of his privacy splitting open.

He knew, of course, that Derek wasn’t kidding about the “this is a serious business” thing because, well, for one thing his apartment screamed caution-- there wasn’t a suspicious thing here. For another, he kept the product in a fucking briefcase. Obviously this wasn’t some kind of street-level distribution, where the dealers were tweaking and the shit was grown in some teenager’s foil-lined closet. He wouldn’t be surprised if Derek was involved with selling other shit, too. Maybe something designer and expensive. Stiles just figured, at the end of the day, if he was going to be selling trees, it was better to work for people who had their shit together. So… background checks.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said. “Shit, man. Why would you even deal to me if you knew my dad was a cop?”

“Because it means you’ll be careful.”

Derek finished packing the last of the ounces and then snapped the case closed, which signified a kind of end to their bubble of conversation. Stiles wondered if he could get more out of Derek. He didn’t even know what it was he was trying to get.

Stiles left the loft with his backpack full. He took the train and slipped on the noise-cancelling headphones. He boarded all the way to the bridge and stopped only when his legs were shaking so he could wind them into the railings on the sidewalk and stare at the same view he’d been looking at for too long. Manhattan was a black shadow covered with bright dots across the Hudson, reduced to a sight that would be painted by a million street artists, captured by a million photography students, pined over by a million small town folks who watched a Woody Allen film once and decided NYC was the greatest place on earth.

Stiles wouldn’t mind living in a small town. Somewhere in California, maybe. Somewhere near the woods. His mom used to take him upstate to their uncle’s cabin for the Fourth of July so they could watch the fireworks up over the treeline. He loved that.

Last fourth of July, he and Scott snorted molly at some warehouse party that Allison took them to and he’d had his first actual kiss with a girl who he used to go to school with. Only he could hardly remember what it was like or whether he imagined her hands on his crotch. They spent the next day hiding their vomiting from Melissa by blasting music and staying camped out in Scott’s bathroom.

He didn’t see the fireworks at all.


	2. time bomb

Scott’s scratchy couch was like concrete against his bare back. He rubbed his stomach and looked around at the illuminated living room, bursting with light from the thin shades of Melissa’s windows. There was still half a 40 of malt liquor from the night before sitting on the coffee table. The smell made his stomach roll and his sandpaper tongue itch. He could hear Melissa’s voice in the kitchen, on the phone.

“Well, I was workin’ all night, you know I can’t keep track of the boys when I’m on the emerg’ shift. No, he’s still sleeping,” she said. “He’s on the couch. John, he’s just being a teenager. I know. Why don’t you cool off first, alright? Hit the shooting range. I’ll send him home when he’s up.”

Then he heard her make some hasty excuse to say goodbye, and he was eternally grateful for Scott’s mom and the way she could defuse situations with grace. He didn’t come home last night. His dad was pissed. There were seven missed calls on his phone.

He quickly hid the leftover alcohol behind the TV, even though Melissa must have seen it on her way in, and he yawned his way into the kitchen where she was washing the counter, still in her scrubs.

“Did you just get in?” he asked her. She worked the night shift, but it was almost ten in the morning.

Her tired forehead, wrinkled with frown lines, smoothed as she raised her eyebrows at him. “There was a boating accident on the Hudson last night. Lots of sutures-- had to clock in overtime.”

Stiles took the cloth from her hand and wiped the crumbs from the counter himself. “You should go to bed,” he said. “I got this.”

“I take it Allison’s over since you were exiled to the couch last night?” she asked, giving him a loving pat on the shoulder as she moved toward the refrigerator.

Stiles awkwardly nodded, but admitting that Scott was getting laid under her roof wasn’t as painful as it used to be. He was there the night Melissa caught Allison half-naked in Scott’s bed last year, and he was there for the screaming match and the lecture that followed. Melissa rolled her eyes.

“You kids get away with murder, you know.” She spoke with the tiredness of someone who was overworked, who had long ago resigned to the behavior of her son and his stupid friends.

Stiles started running the water to clean the dishes that they had used up last night from cooking with the munchies. Melissa leaned against the counter with one hand on her hip.

“Your dad called. He wants you home tonight, Stiles.” He didn’t say anything. The warm water from the dishes made him sweat. “ _Tonight_ , Stiles,” she enforced.

Then he nodded because it was hard not to want to obey her. She ran her fingers once through his hair, smoothing it down, and it struck him so hard in his belly, deep in his gut—that empty, heart-pounding grief. It was the too-intense feeling of being someone’s son, and suddenly missing his mother so much it made his eyes sting. It only lasted a few seconds, because her hand eventually fell, and she eventually left to go to bed and prepare for her next night shift, but it left him standing there blinking the water out of his eyes.

Dishes cleaned and stacked, he knocked softly on Scott’s bedroom door, and heard a groan of protest from inside. “Are you decent?”

He went in anyway, happy to find Allison already awake, sitting up in bed, wearing one of Scott’s tee shirts. Isaac and Scott were still asleep, curled into each other on top of the blankets like a pair of fucking puppies.

“How come Isaac gets to cuddle up with you three, but I get the couch?”

Allison ripped apart a little bud and stuffed it into Scott’s bong, which needed to be cleaned out. “Because we’re not having sex with you. Wake and bake?” she held the bong out to him.

“Open the window, Melissa just got home.”

They took a few hits and blew out thin streams of smoke toward the fire escape. Allison stretched her arms up and shook her head a little. Her phone went off and she got lost in it while Stiles stretched out on the floor, opening his bag to check on the stash he’d left in here last night.

“Lydia’s party is tonight right?” Allison said after a few seconds. “Ugh, I’m hungover.”

“It’s the summer,” Stiles said. “We’re always hungover.”

*

He forgot to call his dad that night, and a fifth of jäger and four bowls later, he forgot that he was meant to go home. Instead, he sat on the edge of the sink of Lydia’s pristine bathroom while Malia puked into the toilet next to him. His head had _just_ stopped spinning and the Gatorade was warm, but it was helping. In a few minutes, he’d be able to drink more jäger.

Malia stood up after she flushed. She wobbled, but Stiles caught her. “Gimme the toothpaste,” she slurred.

She brushed her teeth with her finger, leaning into the sink, hair a mess and head pressed against Stiles’s hip. She had dyed it bright green in July, but now it was a washed out yellow, her brown roots coming through. When she stood up, she gave him a kiss that tasted like mint, sloppy and wet, and then she asked him if would go down on her.

“What? Right now?”

Her hand rested firmly on his hip, eyes asking permission. Whether they were glossed over from alcohol or horniness, he had no idea.

They messed around sometimes. In April, when everyone went up to her dad’s lake house in Cape Cod. She’d had a panic attack when it was just the two of them around the bonfire, after everyone passed out. Stiles had helped her breathe and made her drink water, acutely aware of what she was going through and scared for the way she was breathing. And after, she had cried and asked him not to tell anyone about it. He didn’t, just helped her get changed and get to bed, and it sort of made them closer. The next night, she talked him through putting his hand down her bikini in the hot tub and she gave him a blowjob after.

 “You know what--” she hiccupped, pressed the back of her hand to her face. “Never mind.”

And then she dropped back to the toilet, retching. Stiles held her hair as someone pounded on the bathroom door.

At 4 am, Stiles stood in the kitchen of Lydia’s house with a group of people he didn’t know at all, and all of them were NYU art students, talking about a bunch of academic jargon he didn’t understand. He had no clue where Lydia was. He had no clue where Allison and Scott were. He barely knew who he was himself. Isaac and Erica were dead asleep on the couch.

So he grabbed his backpack and he crawled out into the street. The world was spinning like when his dad used to take him to central park on the weekends, take him by the hands and twirl so fast that his legs would fly out from under him. He just looked down, tried to get one foot to follow the other. He was doing pretty well until he ran into a garbage can. And then someone was grabbing him by the shoulders. The blue NYPD letters filled up his vision. HIs dad?

“Hey, kid.”

“Dad,” he murmured. Oh shit, he was in so much trouble.

“Where do you live, huh?” There was a bright light. A flashlight.

Stiles confusedly looked around because this wasn’t his dad. It was a cop, but it wasn’t his dad. Then even as obliterated as he was, the backpack full of weed suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. The cop grabbed him by the arm, and there was a police cruiser beside them on the street, and _fuck, fuck, fuck,_ all the alarms were blaring, but he _couldn’t_ get his shit together. When he tried to open his mouth, nothing but garbled words came out.

“Stiles, man, you ran off," someone else said behind him. He staggered to the side a bit and someone caught him. Someone warm. He recognized their voice.

“Der-rrek?” he slurred. He looked up and his eyes found the unfocused shape of a five o’clock shadow that he knew. He dropped his entire body weight into Derek’s side, but somehow Derek held him up. He felt his hand wrap around him. Why the fuck was Derek here?

“You know this kid?” the cop asked.

“I’m sorry sir, this is my stepbrother. I’m responsible for him.”

“Hey,” Stiles felt his chin being lifted up. The cop forced him to look at him. “Is this guy your brother?”

Stiles was able to go along with the role playing, threw his arm around Derek’s waist, and said, “Oh, yeah. Derek and me share a roo-om.” He still had the hiccups.

“Get him off the streets, alright?” The cop said harshly.

“Absolutely. Have a good morning, sir.”

Then he was being half-dragged to the edge of the street. Stiles was still tucked around him like a koala because it was the only thing keeping him upright. He gently lowered him into the passenger seat of a car that smelled new and clean.

He didn’t really understand much of the car ride, he just understood that the warm arm against his was Derek’s. Derek didn’t speak, but Derek never spoke to him usually, so it was normal enough, if Stiles squinted.

Soon they were outside again and Derek buzzed him into an apartment which must have been his. The stairs were little tricky. Stiles couldn't get his feet stop tripping over themselves, but Derek was a steady weight by his side the whole time and soon he was crashing through the threshold of the loft that he'd been to so many nights before. Except he still had an entire bag of weed with him this time. Derek set him down on the sofa, and then he left for a moment while Stiles stared out of focus at the plain grey walls of Derek’s living room. It could've been that he was just drunk, but he swore but this place smelled good, like rich candles. The lights were set to dim, which made the whole room more orange than chromatic. It was weirdly homey here. He could see half a pie on the counter of his kitchen.

Derek filled a glass of water and made him drink the whole thing. As soon as he set it down, Stiles pulled off his hat. He felt a little less drunk, but even more tired.

“What am I doing here?”

“You were about to get thrown in the drunk tank. And arrested for possession. Distribution, too, probably. You’re lucky I ran into you.”

“But…” He looked up at Derek, standing over him. He didn’t look mean or angry. He was kind of stoic, like a statue of a warrior that he’d seen at the Guggenheim with his mother when he was a kid. “Why were you there?”

“I was making a delivery.”

Right. Because this was Stiles’ _dealer’s_ loft. And Stiles put his head in his hands, rubbing his face. “I’m a fuck up.”

Derek didn’t say anything, but Stiles needed to apologize, needed to make it all okay. He meant to grab Derek’s arm, but he it was his hip instead and he tugged a little. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. His face was only a few inches away from Derek’s stomach. If he moved his head down, he could kiss Derek’s through his pants. He wrapped his arms around Derek’s middle, face pressed up intimately close to his abs. He wanted to feel Derek's dick, wanted to feel how hot his skin was.

“Thanks,” he said into the fabric of his t-shirt. “Thank you, Derek, just-- thank you, Derek…" His lips dragged lower, tongue tasting the metal of his fly.

And then he was pressing his mouth, open and wet, against the denim. He felt that disconnected heat, the liquid pool stirring in his belly, making his dick twitch against the too-tight pants he had on. The feeling was liquid and loose because he was so drunk, making him feel pliable like putty.

The weight of a hand landed on his shoulder and thought Derek was going to hug him back, hold him closer, push his head down, but then it just pushed him away, and pressed him into the comfy leather of the sofa.

“You need to sleep it off,” Derek said.

So Stiles slept.

*

The couch underneath him wasn’t scratchy, so it wasn’t Scott’s, and the air was cool.

It all flew back in his face as soon as he opened his eyes to an unfamiliar grey ceiling, a collection of drunk memories that formed a montage of _oh, God_ in his brain. The first thing he did was cover his face with his hands. The second thing he did was slowly sit up.

“Bathroom’s down hall on your left,” someone said. He looked up to see Derek in the kitchen. It smelled like food and coffee. Stiles didn’t know what else to do but hobble out of sight.

Derek’s bathroom was as nice as the rest of the place. Everything was in order and shining. The only thing that stuck out was this great, big, old looking bathtub. He wanted to fill it up and then never resurface.

Stiles threw up a little, but was able to find the toothpaste and he copied Malia from last night. The face in the mirror was haggard, purple shadows, pale skin. He needed a morning bowl. He wished that he wasn’t thinking about it, but he was. He wanted to take the edge off.

In the kitchen, Stiles awkwardly stood in front of the island where Derek was eating eggs and thumbing through a tablet on the New York Times website. Derek didn’t look up, just pointed at the stove where there were some breakfast in a pan.

“Eat something,” he said.

“Uh...no thanks. I’m-- I’ll just get out of your hair.” He spun around, then turned back. “Thanks...for, you know.”

This sounded like the end of a bad one night stand. Derek just raised an eyebrow, not looking up. Stiles remembered getting a little close for comfort last night and found it hard to meet his eyes.

“There’s coffee. You probably need it.”

He couldn’t eat anything, but he could do coffee, maybe, and try to find out how much shit he was in. He was surprised to find that Derek had a plethora of mismatched mugs in his cabinet. He grabbed one that said _Columbia U_ and wondered if that’s where Derek went to school, or if a family member had given it to him, or who those family members could be. He sat across from Derek on one of the stools.  

“You should call your dad and let him know you’re safe.”

“He’s fine. I don’t need to check in with him every hour.” He was so sick of thinking about his dad. He hadn’t been home in a few days, so he really had no other choice but to crawl back to Brooklyn and beg for mercy anyway. Derek shrugged. He was absorbed in whatever article the Times was spinning and he wouldn’t look at Stiles. So Stiles said, “why are you being so cool with me? Shouldn’t you be, like, threatening me with a hot poker or something? Calling some guys with leather gloves?”

Derek finally looked up from his tablet, studying him for a moment. “Why would I do that?”

“I...I almost lost your weed. I almost got arrested.”  

“Yeah. You fucked up.”

“So...I thought you wanted me to be cautious. That was, like, the opposite of cautious last night. There’s seriously no punishment here?”

He inhaled for a long few seconds, arms crossing. “This isn’t the Cartel, Stiles.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, despite himself. “Yeah, clearly, but--”

“You were handling green, not a brick of heroin. If you went down, you were only hurting yourself.”

“But--

“You know…” Derek looked away, past Stiles’ shoulder to the window overlooking the block. “There was a 50% chance you were going to fuck up the first time I handed you a package. Because you’re young and you’re risky, and you sell hard and fast, which makes you an asset, but it also makes you a time bomb.”

It felt a little like being dissected, like he was put under a microscope, reduced down to his basic qualities. Hard, fast, risky, a time bomb.

“So…”

“So you went boom last night.” Derek put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward, a serious look crossed his face, somehow more serious than he usually seemed. “I’m not cutting you in anymore. If you want to sell, find another source.”

With that, he turned back to the tablet.

“Wha-- you’re kidding me. I’m fired?”

“Go work at McDonalds. Get a paper route. Do something that won’t keep you from having a government job one day,” Derek said, looking down at the tablet again.

Stiles felt irrationally angry, then. He should be thankful that Derek even let him sleep here, that he hadn’t punched Stiles in the face yet, but the prospect of an empty backpack was a black hole in already shitty morning. He bit the inside of his cheek, scrambling to think of another supplier who could provide what Derek did.

And if he was being honest, he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to leave this loft and never see Derek the dealer again, and he didn’t know why, but it felt like an impossible loss.

“Thanks for letting me crash,” he said tightly. Before he could get up, Derek slid a folded wad of cash across the table.

“What’s this?”

“I’m refunding your last purchase. You can keep what you made, but I’m taking the stuff back. Your backpack’s by the door.”

Stiles kind of wanted to cry. Maybe it was the lingering effects of drunk sadness from last night before he fell asleep, the tidal waves of childhood nostalgia and disappointment still wading in his brain. He vaguely remembered how the apartment had seemed like a beacon, like a safe haven, and the smell of Derek’s t-shirt, his warmth... Derek was back to being cold and so was the apartment, all hard edges and black and silver. He sat up from the stool like ripping off a bandaid.

For the first time in a long time, he slipped on an empty backpack. “Bye forever, I guess.”


	3. the cheese string

At the park, Stiles smoked almost an entire pack of cigarettes. He didn’t feel like going down the ramp so he sat on the edge and let his feet dangle. Scott rolled up beside him through his run every now and then, but he was dead set on getting his tricks right for the competition, only a few days away.

It was Boyd who came to sit by him, asked for a smoke, and then asked him if he can get another half-quarter.

“I’m tapped, man. My supplier…” Stiles didn’t really want to get into it. “He’s not supplying anymore.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Boyd took a long drag of the cigarette and then scratched his head. He had no conversation to contribute, and with that, he just got up and left.

Stiles had to turn away half the skate park today because he had nothing. And so no one was really talking to him, and it became very poignantly clear as people rolled past him without so much as a “hi” that Stiles was only their friend if he had something to sell them. Maybe he could just get a new supplier. Maybe it would all go back to normal.

He kept feeling the ghost of Derek’s hands on his shoulders; the odd, empty weight of his backpack.

Scott and Isaac wanted to head over to Greenberg’s birthday party so they came and looped their arms through Stiles’, sensing that he was in a bad mood, probably, and they tried to be all chipper and happy-go-lucky as they dragged him with them. Stiles itched the back of his neck as they ran forward to catch the bus. He _really_ wished he had something to take the edge off.      

*

Something just wasn’t right. The party was the mirror image of a thousand parties, the ones where Stiles would end up on the handlebars of Scott’s bike, riding home with happiness coursing around like a liquid in his blood. But Stiles couldn’t get right. He did a few shots with Isaac, not even talking, just drinking and moving around the bodies crammed into the kitchen. His father called him once, twice. He turned off his phone when it rang for a third time.

He took another shot of Isaac’s gin.

Scott was in the middle of a keg stand, being cheered on by some of Greenberg’s weird college friends. The lights were way too bright in the party and no one had any weed they were willing to share. He did two more shots before he pulled Scott aside.

“I’m gonna head out.”

Scott, who still had beer dribbling on his chin, swayed a bit and asked, “Are you okay, dude? Cause you know you can, like, talk to me or cry and everything and I won’t tell anyone. I’ll wipe your snot up and everything, I swear.”

Stiles felt a prickle of sadness, despite the puppy dog love in Scott’s eyes. He didn’t think there was anything Scott could do to make it better, though he wished he could. For as long as they’d known each other, they’d been on opposite ends of the spectrum. Scott was optimistic, earnest, always looking for the best time ever. Stiles was the pessimistic cynic. They shouldn’t even be friends, but they were because Scott was also loyal above anything else.

“It’s cool. I’m just tired. Hungover. I’m not really feeling it,” he said. It was partly true, but it felt like lying.

“I can come with you, bro, we can watch _The Goonies_.”

“Nah, stay. I’m just gonna crash.” He bumped their foreheads together and then turned to leave before Scott’s eyes melted him and he would burst into tears and be forced into a long heart to heart.

As he left for the door, Scott called out, “Text me!”

He wandered through the hallways until he found the fire escape exit, and drunk, he decided to climb it even though his board was still strapped to his back and he couldn’t see straight. Somewhere near the bottom, he smacked his head on the bar. It hurt, but not nearly as much as it did falling and landing on pavement, his skateboard underneath him

And when he looked, his board was snapped in half. There were some splinters in his back, probably.

Stiles sat on the dirty concrete of the alley and huffed for a while, watching figures and silhouettes walk fast past the entrance to the cramped space between buildings. He was a lot drunker than he thought, disconnected from his sensations. His stomach felt like a vacuum.

“Yo, who’s out there?” a woman with a thick Brooklyn accent called out. There was a girl standing in one of the doorways of the alley. She was wearing skin tight leggings that had a few holes in them and no shoes, a loose galaxy-themed tank top sliding off one of her shoulders.

“I...I fell,” Stiles looked up at the ladder he had been climbing. It was actually a pretty far drop. Huh.

The lady walked out toward him. She was pretty, but messy. When she bent low, he saw that her eyes were red like she was high. “You okay, honey?”

“I’m…” He picked up the broken remnants of his board. Somewhere deep inside, his heart was cracked down the middle just the same, but he was drunk and more angry than sad so he pitched the board into the alley. Turning to the woman, looking at her dilated eyes, he figured he had a shot at scoring.

“You know where I can get some weed?” He saw her nose wrinkle up, so he added, “I got money.”

“You got money?”

“Yeah, I just...you wanna get stoned?”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go. I got you.” She smoothed his hair back and it felt really nice.

Buying from her might not be as professional as Derek, but it was something. He was confident about it, even though she was a stranger, he was drunk and she looked cool, looked like she partied. Sometimes it was all about finding the people like you, the people who liked to get fucked up all through the summer holiday. Stiles had been drunk for a week.

She said her name was Kali and she led him inside where it was even stuffier than out. She pulled him a dark stairway and he told her his real name because he knew she wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.

“I thought you was Duecallian, my man Duec. My boyfriend. He owes me some money and I thought you was him.”

“I can pay you. I just need an ounce. Or whatever you got.”

She talked about this Duec guy all the way to her apartment door, where there was music pouring out of the cracks. Inside was smoky, smelling like stale nicotine and burned food, and some other kind of melted plastic stench that Stiles couldn’t place.

There was another girl sitting at the kitchen table who had black hair tied up in a bun. She was just wearing her t-shirt and underwear, smoking a cigarette that had burned down to the filter. She was pretty, with high arched eyebrows, but it looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Stiles saw another guy sleeping on the sofa in the other room. He was big and built, covered in tattoos.

“I thought you said Duec was here?” the other woman told Kali. “He owes me for that trick from Tuesday. Motherfucker gave me a cold sore.”

“He wasn’t there,” she said. She ruffled Stiles’s hair. “I found baby in the alley.”

“Uh-uh, no fuckin’ way, Kali, I am not working tonight. You’re gonna have to do him. And Duecalian told you not to bring them back here no more, you gotta make em’ pay for a room if they ain’t got a car.”

Kali shoved Stiles forward into the seat at the kitchen table. “Chill, Jenifer, he don’t wanna fuck, he want us to sell him some shit. Unless you into dick, baby boy, then Ennis will do you.” She gave his shoulders a few shakes from behind and Stiles saw that she was referencing the big scary dude in front of the TV.

Stiles made a few connections, the first being that these people would, if he paid them, have sex with him. The second thing was that were the few scorched spoons and pieces of tin foil sitting around on the kitchen table.

“You got money?” Jennifer asked.

Stiles thought he better show them. He also thought he better get out of here soon, but it was a quick, passing thought. He couldn’t focus too much on the future. Those eight shots he’d taken suddenly hit him like a freight train and he had to hold onto the table a bit, dropping the whole wad of cash that Derek gave him on top of a pile of empty baggies.

“You good?” Jennifer asked.

“He’s fucked,” Kali said behind him, laughing. “Look at all that paper, man.”

Jennifer played with the cash.

“I need to buy some--,” Stiles slowed because he was forgetting the objective.

“For sure, honey, for sure.” Jennifer looked up. “Get him a drink. Go wake up Ennis.”

Stiles took the warm beer that Kali handed him, and then after a moment or so, he heard arguing coming from the living room. “.... why are you bringing fucking strangers up in here? What the hell’s wrong with you?” It was a man’s deep and angry voice.

“He’s got, like, four hundred dollars, Ennis. He’s fucked up anyway, let’s just give him a hit and--”

Stiles’s head lolled. He was going to pass out soon, probably, but he still wanted that joint.  “Do you have…?” he tried to ask, but he was being pulled out of his seat.

She took him to living room, guiding her with a sweaty hand, and Stiles smelled that skunky stench of weed and he thought, _finally._ He plopped down on the couch next to Kali and the big guy who was rubbing sleep out of his eyes, fiddling with something in his hands. Kali gave him a loosely rolled joint and Stiles forgot to worry about the wad of cash he’d left on the kitchen table. He held the hit in deep and long, until black clouds started to swirl. Then he relaxed a bit into the couch which was weirdly comfy. Jennifer and Ennis talked animatedly about something, but Stiles let it become white noise.

Ennis, the big guy, peeled open a plastic package. Stiles saw that it was plastic, but for some reason he thought the guy was opening a stick of string cheese. Kali was melting something with a lighter. He didn’t look very hard at what it was exactly because the song blaring from the speakers was one of his favorites. He let his head fall to the side, closed his eyes, and lazily mouthed along to the lyrics. For a few minutes it was really quiet, except for the music. Then, something went tight around his arm, like someone was squeezing it. He wondered why Kali would squeeze his arm.

And why her fingers were lightly pressing around the inside of his elbow.

And why there was a sharp pinch, and why she said, “I told you, I got you.”

He jerked his head to the side just in time to see what she was doing to him, and in the few seconds it took, he realized that the cheese string was not a cheese string, it was a needle, and that the tightness was a tourniquet around his arm. He watched her press down the syringe that was sticking into him, and he watched an amber liquid slowly disappear into his arm.

 _I’m shooting up,_ he thought.

Then he didn’t think.

*

He woke up with a huge intake of breath, audible like a scream, like surfacing water when he’d been deep-sea diving. It was really fucking bright inside his head and inside the room. He just laid there for a minute or so, numb, every limb asleep. When he wiggled his toes, they tingled and burned like sparklers.

He heard muffled talking and screaming through the walls, but it wasn’t the chatter he usually heard at Scott’s place, the soft Spanish from telenovela shows coming through the vents with the smell of cooking oils and chilies. He smelled only dankness, cigarettes, and the melted plastic stench. The ceiling was water stained and cracked above him. He didn't know where he was at all.

And there was this pain in his arm. When he looked, he saw it was red and angry, and right there, in the crook of his elbow was a little pinhole, some dried blood. The pinhole brought him back to the needle. And the needle was near him, adjacent to his arm, sitting with a pile of unwrapped syringes and half melted candles on the overcrowded coffee table. Now he knew what that melted plastic smell was.

He was hit with an onslaught of pain and sensation in every body part for the next few moments. His chest ached. When he looked down, he saw he was just in his underwear, the hairs on his stomach all on end. When he felt dried come on the inside of his boxers, he shivered. There was dried come on the outside, too.

He needed out. He had to get out of here. The city outside was loud coming through the windows, and it sounded safe. Stiles was going to pass out again if he didn’t just get the fuck out of here, and he couldn’t do that, couldn’t pass out again. With shaking hands, he found his pants on floor by the couch and pulled them on. He looked, but couldn’t find his shirt. His backpack wasn’t there.

Those girls? What were their names? They were gone. He looked around him frantically and saw through a cracked open door near the kitchen that a bedroom was there. He heard deep snores coming from inside it and his brain lit up with the memory of the big guy—the one with tattoos and a deep angry voice. He had to go, he had to go, he had to go.

The money was gone.

After a few minutes of looking for his shirt, Stiles puked on the carpet, on his hands and knees, pressing his forehead into a stain. He had to steady himself, swallow it down long enough to get out of the door. He puked again in the hallway, outside of someone’s apartment where he could hear a baby screaming inside.

Out on the street he bent into the alley, and he kept heaving and retching until his stomach curled in on itself. God, he was shaking. It was like he’d been out for days, hadn’t eaten, like he’d been in a coma. Like the worst hangover of his entire life. He’d never felt like this before, so close to passing out again, shivering with fever-like intensity.

Fumbling, he found his phone thankfully in his pocket. As he powered it on, people walked by and looked at him just sitting against the brick, no shirt on. No shoes, either, he realized.

There were a ton of missed calls from his dad.

His chest sharpening like a knife, he realized what he looked like right now, what his dad would do if he happened to drive by in the cruiser. He wanted to cry. It felt rotten and spoiled, everything, like his body was holding in poison, and he couldn't _breathe_ past it.  

And he needed help. He really needed help. Stiles called the only person he could think to call in this situation.

*

Sitting in Derek’s car, Stiles saw his reflection in the rear-view mirror. Dried blood on his head from when he fell on the fire escape, dark purple under his eyes. His lips were a little blue, like he’d been holding his breath. He kept looking down at the pinhole in his arm.

Derek had found him, crouched in front of him, ignoring the vomit. He’d turned over Stiles’s wrist gently to look at the crook of his elbow. Then he’d helped him into the car like he did the other night, only Stiles wasn’t drunk anymore.

He turned to Derek, who navigated the busy Sunday traffic with concentration.

“She was just going to sell me some weed...I didn’t even see her doing it. I just looked down and--” he tried to explain, squeezed his mouth to fight off the nausea. “Fuck.”

It sounded stupid and vulnerable. Stiles was the little kid who took candy from a stranger. He should have known better.

He put his head in his hands, rubbed his hair, rubbed the cut viciously. “I can’t--” he let it spill out of him. His breath caught over and over again in his throat like there was a piece of glass there, cutting it off. “I can’t breathe.”

He was going to die. He was dying.

“Don’t try to talk,” Derek said calmly. “Try to breathe.”  He reached across the gearshift and pressed into Stiles middle with a heavy and hot hand on his bare stomach. “You’re not dying. It’s just panic. Count your breath.” Stiles leaned into the weight of his hand. The tightness was only as taught as a thin piece of thread. “You’re okay,” Derek reassured.

*

The bathtub filled with steaming water as Stiles shivered in his boxers. He remembered casually  admiring the tub a few days ago, but now it felt like the last body of water on Earth, and he was desperate to sink into it and try to forget. Derek rifled through the medicine cabinet, coming up with peroxide and some gauze. Stiles forgot about the dried mess on his underwear when he took his clothes off. It was like a little electric shock to see it again. He peeled the gross fabric off, forgetting about modesty as well. The heat from the bath rose in the air, warmed him even standing naked there. He covered himself when Derek turned around.

Derek wasn’t looking at his dick, though. He looked at the marks on Stiles’ stomach, on his thighs. Bite marks, hickeys, straight lines like nails had scraped down his ribs.

“I don’t remember that,” he said to mostly to himself.

“We can worry about it later.”

Stiles liked the way Derek said “we”, as if he is a part of this mess. 

He let him come sit by the edge of the bath as he sank into it. He cleaned Stiles’ forehead gently and as the peroxide ate away the bacteria, he leaned into the sting.

“You don’t have to—“ he tried to say when Derek pulled out a bandage.

“It needs to be covered,” Derek said, ignoring him. “It looks like an abrasion, pretty shallow. You're probably not concussed, so you can sleep it off. You can stay the night. ”

Afterwards, Derek gave him a warm towel fresh out of the dryer. He gave him some worn clothes to sleep in. Stiles was so tired that he forgot to feel uncomfortable in the situation. Truth be told, he felt more comfort inside the loose pair of sweat pants and an oversized t-shirt than he had in his own clothes and in his own house in months. Derek led him to the bedroom where the curtains were drawn and it was very dark. The bed was memory foam and king sized and he wouldn't have expected anything else. Stiles sat on the edge, eyes drooping. He wanted to look around, study the intimate space where Derek slept, and smell the sheets, maybe, but turning a light on felt impossible. 

"You’ll be okay in the morning," Derek told him. 

“Will I?” He meant to sound more sarcastic. It came out tight.

Derek sighed softly. It was a strange sound, suppressed against his throat like he hadn't meant to make a sound at all. He was standing by the door, looking into the dark room where Stiles was sitting on the bed, but he came forward and was lost to Stiles for a moment. Then he felt him sit on the edge of the bed, carefully and far enough away from Stiles that it was safe.

"Listen," he began, like what he was saying was a burden to unload. “I have someone coming to bring you something. Medicine.”

“What kind of medicine?”

“PEP. Preventatives for HIV. Post-exposure.”

Stiles chewed on it for a moment, playing with the hem of Derek’s shirt that he was wearing. It took a great deal of mental energy not to start crying again. “Have you ever had to take them?”

He wished he could properly make out Derek’s face in the dark, because Derek was a person who communicated in looks. In gestures. He'd asked because it was the first thing that came to his head and he realized it was probably too personal, too much for him to pry at, but he didn't really care anymore if he was being socially appropriate. 

After a few beats, Derek said, “I have.”

“Have you ever done H?” Stiles asked. It was like he was trying to unfurl a long tangle of string—pulling a thread and waiting for the unravelling. Derek communicated in looks, and he wasn’t good at being a voice in the dark, but Stiles appreciated that he was trying.

“Yes. It’s a long story. Not a good one.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Derek took a breath and another moment of silence, like he was never planning on telling him the story anyway. Maybe it was a forgotten thing he was keeping under lock and key in some faraway place. Stiles wished he could speed up time and skip to the part where the last 24 hours could be safely away from him in that way.

“Sorry for asking,” he added.

“You have to… try and understand where you’ve made mistakes. And where things…where things weren’t your fault. Last night—it wasn’t your fault, Stiles.”

“Why? Because I’m just a kid.”

Derek’s voice this time was heavy, like it wanted to crack. “Yeah,” he said. “Because you’re just a kid.”

Derek was once just a kid. Stiles wondered about that, and about the Derek who bought the Columbia U mug in his cupboard, and about the Derek who rode dirt bikes, the Derek who did heroin. He felt that the Derek in front of him was perhaps just as tired as he was now. He said, “thanks.” It was too small a word, but it was all he had for now.

He gently pressed on Stiles’ shoulder, like he had the other night when Stiles was drunk. Stiles wasn’t drunk now, but he wanted to wrap his arms around Derek’s torso again, press his face into the warmth of his hard stomach, wanted to feel the strength for himself like it might make his own wiry body more steady. Stronger.

But he didn’t do that. Derek stood up and away from him and Stiles burrowed under the covers. He tried to sleep, rolling to turn his back to Derek. His eyelids weighed a thousand pounds and his heart ached like it was asking for a rest, for some unconsciousness to beat slow and true for a few hours.

He wasn’t sure, but it felt like a long time before Derek left the room.


End file.
